The physical-chemical and organoleptic characteristics of virgin olive oil are grouped according to QUALITY or PURITY.

 

Virgin olive oils are oils obtained from the fruit of the olive tree solely by mechanical or other physical procedures, under conditions that entail no alteration in the oil and which has undergone no treatment other than washing, decanting, centrifugation and filtration, and excludes oils obtained by any other method or any mixture with oils of another nature. EC Regulation No. 1638/98 and EC Regulation No. 1513/2001

Virgin olive oils are classified in accordance with quality and purity criteria, which cover physical-chemical and organoleptic characteristics characterizing each class of olive oil.

By paying close attention to all of these characteristics, virgin olive oils are classified from a higher to lower level of quality, depending on the official denominations and definitions.

The quality criteria vary for each class of extra virgin or virgin olive oil, and the purity criteria are common to both.

With respect to virgin olive oil, it is important to know that: Virgin olive oil is obtained from the milling of olives . It is the point of departure for classification.
When virgin olive oil is excellent , with no defects, it is called extra virgin olive oil .

When the virgin olive oil has obvious defects, whether organoleptic, physical-chemical, or both, we call this oil lamp quality virgin olive oil.

Once the virgin olive oil is extracted, the necessary analyses are carried out to check the physical-chemical Quality parameters of the virgin olive oil.

Once it has been analytically shown that our virgin olive oil is below the permitted indices, thereby meeting the quality criteria (acidity level, peroxide index and UV Spectrometry: K232, K270, Delta-K), we will take a representative sample of the production, at random, and will send it to the tasting panel .

If the virgin olive oil does not meet the minimum permitted quality criteria, it will be classified as a lamp quality virgin olive oil and sent to the refineries.

The tasting panel analyses the organoleptic characteristics and determines the fruitiness average and the defects average.

The organoleptic characteristics are truly discriminatory.

Depending on the points obtained from the tasting panel and the analytical result of the quality criteria, the virgin olive oil will be upgraded ( extra virgin ) or downgraded ( lamp quality virgin oil ) in terms of category.